Warren Ryan has a point about racism and classics

Pat Sheil

If nothing else, Warren Ryan's use of the term "darky" during a football call draws attention to the remarkable power of words.

Ryan's defence that the word appeared in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone With The Wind might seem a tad lame at first blush – after all, the sensitivities involved in dealing with racism, especially in sport, would not exactly be news to someone in his position.

"The ABC has suspended me pending an investigation, so I have resigned to save them the trouble of conducting it": Ryan. Photo: Stefan Moore

But is Ryan a dinosaur that time has left behind? Or are we so worried about even appearing to hold a racist view that we find ourselves "investigating" people for being in the same room as someone who drops a howler?

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This is certainly the situation Ryan's co-commentator David Morrow finds himself in.

Ryan has a point, in as much as being vilified for referring to a work of literature takes us into troubling territory.

Such controversies have always been with us – it's the context that changes.

When the Gone With The Wind film appeared in 1939, no one batted an eyelid at words like "darky". The firestorm was over Clark Gable's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn".

In 2014, you wouldn't be arrested for tearing pictures of golliwogs out of Enid Blyton books in Martin Place, screaming "This book is a f---ing disgrace!"

You can't buy golliwog books any more, and it's not just kids' books. Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus was on high school reading lists in the '70s. You would be hard-pressed to find a copy in a school library anywhere today.

Our caution about hurting the feelings of others is admirable, and a vast improvement on the self-serving assumptions of the past.

But we must not rewrite history.

Cruel racism is easy to spot and we do give a damn, but by the same token we don't want The Merchant of Venice going the way of The Nigger of the Narcissus.